


(Daisy) Don't You Forget About Me

by Sanctuaria



Series: Celebrating AoS Season 7 (with angst and hurt/comfort) [9]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: 1980s, Canon Divergence, Dekesy, Eventual Brief Hurt/Comfort, F/M, LemonQuake, Lemons, Music, and the EYELINER, basically Daisy experiences the live Deke Squad performance instead of Mack, episode 7x07, season 7, so assume the Zephyr jumped less far in the future and she recovered quicker than in canon, those leather pants tho
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-10
Updated: 2020-07-10
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:21:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25187110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sanctuaria/pseuds/Sanctuaria
Summary: Daisy doesn’t know quite what she expected, walking into a bar that advertised live music headlined by the most up-and-coming band of 1983. Honestly, knowing him, the black eyeliner, tight red leather pants, and ‘Deke Squad’ band name don’t even really take her by surprise.What she does not expect, however?Just howgoodhe looks in them.
Relationships: Deke Shaw/Skye | Daisy Johnson, Phil Coulson & Skye | Daisy Johnson
Series: Celebrating AoS Season 7 (with angst and hurt/comfort) [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1764745
Comments: 33
Kudos: 63
Collections: fill the daisy/deke tag with actual content 2020





	(Daisy) Don't You Forget About Me

**Author's Note:**

> This got away from me. Obviously. Credit for the prompt goes to agentsofwhat on Tumblr (Nomi7377) and agentofmarvel084 who passed it along to me and kept me company while writing it until 5:30am last night. 
> 
> Any excuse for me to write Dekesy, amirite? ;)

Daisy looks down at the crumpled flyer in her hand, then back up at the neon sign of the bar. Swayze’s. She stuffs the paper back in the pocket of her plaid 1973 suit jacket, glances both ways, then jay-walks across the moderately busy street as soon as there’s an opening between cars. In the nighttime, everything is lit up in bright colors, the flashing of a strobe light—or maybe a disco ball?—exploding out from the open door of the bar every few seconds, the sounds of cheering and blasting music with it. There’s even a small line outside the door that she has to stand in, her ears beginning to ring from the occasional high-pitched shrieks of the crowd inside. Whoever’s playing tonight is popular, and Daisy briefly wonders if she’s about to witness some famous 80s singer that she likely won’t even recognize, given she’s the youngest one on the team and with the nuns at St. Agnes’ refusal to keep any cassette tapes around that weren’t Bible hymns or Amy Grant.

A small stream of people exit the bar, bumping past her and the rest of the line smelling like alcohol, sweat, and a good time, and the line slowly shuffles inside. The lighting is even worse in the interior, and Daisy takes a moment to orient herself amidst the pack of bodies. The crowd is between her and the stage, and the latter is empty except for the musical equipment; whoever was playing must have just finished, explaining the sudden exodus.

Daisy scans the crowd for Deke, but between the strobe lights and the crush of rhythmically-moving bodies she gives up on finding him that way except as a last resort, squeezing her way toward the bar and trying not to get sucked into the throng. “You’re pretty,” a drunk guy slurs at her, hand reaching out to paw at her jacket, but she gives him one of May’s patented Murder Stares—hey, she learned from the best—and he quickly moves on.

She hits up the bartender instead, a woman with frizzy blonde hair. “I’m looking for a man named Deke Shaw,” she says. “Have you seen him around here? I…need to talk to him.”

The bartender scoffs. “Yeah, you and every other woman in this room.”

“Um, what?” Daisy asks, her nose scrunching slightly in disgust. She can’t possibly mean what she thinks she means…

The bartender nods toward the front of the crowd nearest the stage. “Another Deke-ette. You’re a little late, but join the rest of your groupie friends; he’s about to come on for the encore.”

Before Daisy has time to say anything else—like _Deke-ette?_ , or possibly _what the fuck?_ , and maybe _oh no not again_ —the lights dim around her. The crowd screams at the stage, and Daisy pushes her way through them, making it about halfway there before the wall of bodies blocks her completely. A figure in red steps out onto it, picking up the microphone from the stand with his back still to the audience, bathed in shadow.

Daisy’s entire thought process screeches to a halt.

“Thank you all for coming out tonight,” Deke says, wearing a red headband and a red bandana and a red jacket and _are those red leather pants?_ “My name is Deke Shaw, and I wrote this song.”

The stage lights blaze on, and—

And Deke looks _hot_.

Nope. Nope nope nope nope. Her mind hurriedly tries to backtrack—how the hell does he look that good in eyeliner, though—but she has about two seconds to process before:

_“Hey, hey, hey, HEY!”_

Deke Shaw can sing.

_“Ooooh, oooooh, oh…”_

Deke Shaw _sings_.

_“Won't you come see about me?”_

Deke Shaw sings in _tight red leather pants_ and _black eyeliner_. 

“ _I’ll be alone dancing to disco, baby…Tell me your troubles and doubts…Giving me everything inside and also out and…”_

Daisy shakes her head, resisting the urge to just bury it in her hands entirely, or even just leave the bar. Of course he does. He’s Deke Shaw, and this is the…seventh?…time period he’s seamlessly adapted to in the two years she’s known him. At least this time he’s not arrested.

_“Love's strange, so ready or not…Here I come, like a buzz…Running with thunder, blood, and…_ ”

She has half a mind to pull out her phone and take video, if not for the fact that iPhones won’t exist for another quarter century.

_“Slow change may pull us apart…Or if the knife stabs into your heart…Daisy!”_ Her heart jolts in her chest, and she stares dumbfounded at the stage, all thoughts of cell phones and ripples versus waves forgotten. _“Don't you…forget about me…”_

This is it. This is actually the weirdest thing she can handle. She should just quit S.H.I.E.L.D. right now, because she’s standing in a bar in the 1980s with a guy from 2091 singing her name in a song she’s getting a growing suspicion he didn’t write, and said guy has a crowd of adoring female fans and is also her best friends’ grandson.

_“Don't, don't, don't, DON’T! Don't you…forget about me…”_

Yup, she’s 100% sure she’s heard this song before, meaning he stole it. She’s also sure that leather pants were designed specifically to hug one’s ass when he jumps around like that, spinning and dancing and kicking in the air with the mic.

NOPE.

_“Will you recognize me?…Will you call my name and say it nicely?…Rain keeps falling, rain keeps falling…down, down, down, down…Hey, hey, hey, HEY!”_

She has to get out of here. She has to get back to the Zephyr, get back to Mack, to May and Elena.

Her feet remain planted firmly on the somewhat sticky floor.

_“Ooooh, oooooh, yeah!”_ Head tilted upward toward the ceiling in some sort of ridiculous 1980s power pose, Deke yanks off the red jacket halfway to reveal a white tank top and muscled arms. _“As you walk on by…”_ He shrugs it back on a second later with a smooth roll of his shoulders, his eyes back on the crowd. She knows the exact moment he spots her, his kohl-lined eyes visibly widening as he seems to choke on the next line. _“…_ will _you call my name?…”_ Daisy lifts an eyebrow at him and Deke snaps his eyes away from her, still crooning into the microphone. _“As you walk on by, will you call my name?…”_ He drops to his knees, leaning back. _“…Will you call my name?…”_

She’ll call his name all right, right before she smacks him the face or quakes him into a wall.

Deke leaps to his feet, gesturing at the crowd as he bounces up and down with the beat. “Come on. Sing it with me!”

It occurs to Daisy that she needs a drink, but she’s not altogether sure whether the buzz of alcohol running through her veins will make this entire thing better or worse.

The backup singers engage with him. _“Fa, la-la-la-la…”_

_“Don't you…”_

_“La-la-la-la…”_

_“…Forget about me…”_

Please let this be the last verse, please…

_“Fa-la, la-la!”_

_“Whoa, whoa, whoa, don’t! Don't you…forget about me…Don't, don't, don’t—”_ He strikes a pose, one fist punched in the air. _“—DO NOT!”_

The crowd screams and Deke walks offstage with the other band members, leaving Daisy rooted to the spot and wondering what the actual hell new timeline they are creating. The drum set and the wall behind them even have a logo painted on them for ‘The Deke Squad’…

Daisy moves to the side of the room near enough to where she’d been standing that he’ll be able to find her, S.H.I.E.L.D. training preferring her back to the wall. She checks the watch Simmons gave her while she waits, even though their twenty-seven day countdown clock is nowhere near expiring on day two, and wonders if Elena’s convinced Mack to head back to the Zephyr yet. Last she saw them, she’d left to find the other team member gone missing and give them some time alone, but not before giving her former partner the biggest hug she could manage, trying to tell him without words how sorry she was for his loss, for what he’d had to do.

“Daisy?!” Deke shouts, appearing in front of her still in his same outfit but with a white towel around his neck. He engulfs her in a delighted hug, smelling of sweat and maybe…glitter? If glitter has a smell. He releases her. “I can’t believe you made it! What’d you think?”

“Um…” She struggles for something suitable to say.

“Good, right? Is the Zephyr back then?” Deke continues. “Where’s Mack?” He glances back toward the stage, then tugs on her arm. “I want you to meet the rest of the band! They’re all pretty cool, and we’ve been killing it in the merch sales so we can grab you a t-shirt or something back there too. Oh! We even have our own cologne, and I think you’ll like the name—Tattletale.” He grins at her, obviously waiting for her reaction. “Like what you accused me of, when we first got back to—” He lowers his voice to a whisper, hand cupped around his mouth. “— _2019_. Well, actually, you said ‘ratting people out,’ but—””

“Deke, what are you doing here?” Daisy hisses.

“I mean, you left us behind, so unless you expected me to invent my own form of time travel using 1980s computer equipment—” Something catches his eye. “Oh! There’s Roxy, come on—”

“Deke, _no_! We need to be getting back to the Zephyr, to the team! The mission is not over. And also, Mack?!?” Daisy demands. “What the _fuck_ are you doing here? You just left Mack to cope alone? What the hell is wrong with you?”

“EXCUSE ME,” Deke says, tone all indignation as he shoves a finger at her chest. “I didn’t _leave_ Mack, okay? He didn’t want me around, and I _tried_.”

Daisy crosses her arms. “Obviously not hard enough.”

“I TRIED!” Deke explodes. “I had to enlist Cricket’s help to even find him, okay? And when I did, he wanted nothing to do with me! He wanted space, so I gave him space. It’s been forty weeks since the Zephyr jumped without us and I have been by his house every single one of them with a bag of groceries or a new one of those model cars or something and he hasn’t let me in even _once_. But I keep leaving them, because he’s my friend.”

_Oh_. Daisy purses her lips. “…okay, but—”

“I also visit little Mack and his brother Ruben and bring them stuff,” he barrels onward, talking right over her. “School supplies, toys—the band’s doing well enough that I was even able to help his uncle out after his car got rear-ended last month. Because I get it, okay? I lost my mom when I was _nine_ , and then I lost my dad to the same fairytale that got her killed not long after. And it was the Lighthouse and the Kree and so _no one_ was there for me. I had to learn how to make it on my own.” Deke swallows visibly, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “So I _get_ Mack’s grief. So I keep coming back after he lashes out, because I get what he’s going through, and I don’t blame him. And I also know how much it sucks to deal with it all alone, so I’m sorry if I’m not the one he wanted or you wanted around to help him, but I wasn’t just going to leave him because of that.” Deke crosses his arms, matching her posture. “I know what’s it’s like to be suddenly alone and abandoned, and I was not going to let that happen to Mack or a couple of kids.”

Daisy doesn’t quite know what to say, only aware of the vague feeling of regret flooding her. “Deke, I’m…I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have assumed…”

“Yeah, well,” Deke shrugs his shoulders a little, a far cry from the bouncing, dancing guy of onstage, “I know how it looks.”

“Yo-Yo’s with him now,” Daisy tells him, trying to extend the olive branch. “May sent me to find you and bring you in. We’re not certain the Chronicoms were actually all destroyed by the blast.”

“Yeah, they were not,” he says.

“How do you know?”

Deke smiles, the nerves showing in his eyes just slightly. _God, that eyeliner…_ “See, the band…is actually just a cover.”

“I knew you didn’t write that song.”

“No, no, it’s the band is a _cover_. And Roxy, and Olga, and Tommy and Ronnie and Cricket—well maybe not Cricket; he mostly does drums—they’re agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. now. So we can’t just leave without them.”

Daisy stares at him. “You recruited…agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.…from your band.”

“No!” Deke says. “That would be stupid. I recruited my band from agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. after I made them agents.”

“Right.” She resists the urge to pinch the bridge of her nose. “Well, with Sousa there’s no extra bunks on the Zephyr, plus they’re from 1983, so…”

“ _Hey_ , I thought you would’ve learned by now not to count out people just because they’re not from your time period,” Deke tells her, affronted. He catches the look in her eye. “Look, we at least should let them know we’re leaving and have them keep up the work. We’ve been running the Gauntlet for _months_ preparing for this.”

“The Gauntlet? Do I even want to know?”

“The name has nothing to do with you—well, only slightly—” Deke grins. “Better yet—I’ll show you.” He beckons her toward the back exit of the bar. “I think May would like it, maybe even incorporate it into her strike team training module… Plus, we gotta pick up Coulson.”

Daisy stops dead in her tracks. “Coulson?”

* * *

Of course the Deke Squad’s—nope, she is not calling them that— _Deke’s_ base of operations is the Lighthouse. They probably should have guessed that, avoided Swayze’s altogether.

Then she wouldn’t have to scrub her eyeballs of that musical number, which she is also somehow kicking herself for not recording for posterity. And by posterity, she means Fitz when they finally reunite with him again, because she can imagine the exact shade of red his ears will get at the sight of his grandson singing and dancing a ripped-off song on a stage wearing tight leather pants.

The Lighthouse, at least, looks relatively normal and un-1980s as they take the elevator down to Control and exit into the maze of stark gray hallways. Now that she thinks about it, she’s kind of surprised that Deke chose to set up here, given how much he’s always going on about finally escaping the Lighthouse only to get stuck there again in the future.

Aaaaaaand she spoke too soon.

Daisy steps into Control after Deke, somewhere between trying not to laugh and trying not to look too aghast at the eclectic collection of items that have been added to it, including a silvery disco ball extended from the ceiling and reflecting little bits of light everywhere, an actual full-size hot tub, four retro—or contemporary, at the moment—arcade game machines, and a glowing neon palm tree outline on the wall where their shift schedules were normally posted. She steps forward and almost slips on the brightly colored confetti covering the floor, matching the colors of the streamers overhead.

“Don’t judge,” Deke says, giving her his puppy-dog look again.

“Too late,” Daisy tells him, being a little more careful about where she puts her feet. “What have you done to the Lighthouse?”

“Well, you know, it’s a lot more fun now,” he says.

“S.H.I.E.L.D. isn’t about fun, Deke—”

He scoffs deep in his throat. “Your version certainly isn’t! Maybe if we stopped for a soak in a hot tub or a dance under a disco ball in between traumatizing or apocalypse-level events that would help with some of the ongoing issues we seem to have.”

“So you’re saying this is…therapy,” Daisy says.

Deke bobs his head. “Yeah. Exactly.”

Daisy scans the room again. Members of the Deke Squad lounge around or talk in small groups, still in their performance clothes like Deke. Maybe her brain would operate better if he washed his face.

And changed his pants to something less…form-fitting.

She coughs. “And the guy over there who looks…high?”

Deke follows her gaze. “Oh, that’s just Cricket. He’s just kind of out of it working two jobs. Makes him sleepy, y’know.”

“Two jobs. S.H.I.E.L.D. agent and…?”

“He sells coke.”

Daisy chokes. “ _Deke_!”

“Yeah, I know, Nana gave me the soda-rots-your-teeth speech twice already,” Deke says. Daisy blinks, and blinks again. Deke looks past her, grinning excitedly. “Okay, let me introduce you properly to the squad! Deke Squad, form up!” The various team members approach from several different directions. Two of them have shot glasses in hand, and Daisy takes a conscious step away from ‘Cricket.’ “Deke Squad, this is Agent Daisy Johnson. Daisy, this is Roxy Glass.” He indicates a shorter woman with deep red lips and a mass of brown hair. “She’s kind of the brains of the operation, runs covert ops and tactical.” He points to the woman next to her. “Olga Pachinko, resistance from the Balkans. Only speaks limited English, though she is fluent in the international language…demolitions.” Daisy resists the urge to either laugh or roll her eyes, because _where does Deke find these people?_ “Olga, это Daisy Johnson. Она та, о ком я тебе говорил.”

“Da, oна красивая, кто создает землетрясения,” Olga says, nodding and looking at Daisy with an appraising glance.

Where’s May or Bobbi when she needs them? Actually, no, maybe not May. One look at this place and she might have an aneurysm. Or murder Deke. “You speak Russian?”

“What else was I supposed to be learning over the last ten months?” Deke asks. He gestures to the twins. “Tommy and Ronnie Chang, a.k.a. the Chang Gang, Masters of Disguise. And, of course, Cricket. He plays drums.”

Cricket flicks his chin at her. “Dudette.”

“ _Daisy_.”

“Rad.” Cricket walks off.

“I’ll just…go get Coulson,” Deke says, edging out of the small circle and heading for the upper part of Control.

“Deke talks about you all the time, you know,” Roxy tells her. “Guy’s a little weird—

“Все лимоны!” Olga agrees. “Никогда не доверяй человеку с таким количеством лимонов.”

“—but he’s a good friend.” Roxy eyes her. “He’s got a good heart.”

“…I know,” Daisy admits. “I should see that more often.”

“We made you jumpsuit,” Olga tells her, producing a dark gray outfit adorned with S.H.I.E.L.D. patches and _D. JOHNSON_ stitched onto the nametag on the front. “Это был единственный способ заставить его заткнуться о вас, кроме лезвия в череп.”

“Here he is!” Deke announces just as she is taking the jumpsuit from Olga. He’s lugging a large rolling stand behind him, an old-style TV situated on it and a VCR on top of that, although there’s a few more cables and electrical boxes than Daisy remembers from her elementary school days when they used tech like this. He flicks a switch and Coulson’s face appears on the screen, a weird array of green and blue lights moving behind his head like static or a particularly obnoxious Windows 1995 screensaver.

“ _Coulson_ ,” Daisy says, stepping forward before she’s even considered whether he can see her.

“Daisy,” VCR Coulson says, sounding equally happy to see her.

“Are you okay? You got blown up,” Daisy tells him.

“I’m quite aware of that, thank you,” he smiles at her. “And besides being reduced to a bunch of ones and zeroes, yeah, I think I’m okay.” She wishes she could hug him and make sure for herself—and hey, after Malick, maybe she wants some comfort too—but hugging a TV set will probably look a little weird in front of the Deke Squa—dammit, in front of Deke’s friends, although they’ve since dispersed since he brought over Coulson.

“May said you’d come back,” is all she says instead, giving him a sad smile. “She was very sure about that.”

He gives her a warmer one. “It’s my superpower.” The screen blinks, and Coulson’s head appears again, facing the opposite direction toward Deke. Coulson seems to give him a significant look, and Deke nods. “See you soon, Daisy,” Coulson tells her. Deke reaches over to the VCR and gently unplugs a hard drive from the back of it. He almost slips it into his pocket, then holds it out to her.

“Want to hang on to it?” Daisy gives him a tight nod and a grateful smile, taking the drive carefully and sliding it into her pocket. Deke steps a little closer, and Daisy’s breath catches in her throat. “He also asked me to make sure you were okay. Sybil told him what Malick did to you.”

Her hands clench at her sides, the phantom burn of needles digging into her skin and her spine echoing through her body. “Just a little sore, but I’m okay. Simmons’s healing pod works well. And May wouldn’t have sent me alone if I wasn’t mission-ready.”

“That’s good,” Deke tells her, something soft in his gaze. Somehow the kohl around his eyes only enhances the effect. “But that’s not what we meant.”

Memories of the event, always close to the surface, flood back to her, and Daisy fumbles for words. She finally resorts to just making a small sound in the back of her throat in answer, her shoulders rising a little helplessly. She isn’t even aware she’s opened her arms until Deke is stepping into them, his own circling around her waist. Her chin presses into his shoulder, his back warm and solid under her hands despite the red vinyl of the jacket he’s wearing. For a moment she just allows herself to drift there, to close her eyes and wait for the thoughts of Jiaying and Afterlife and Whitehall and a bloodied, emptied corpse to fade from her mind.

_“Whitehall cut her to pieces. He took her organs, her blood…and when he finished butchering her, he dumped what was left in a ditch, like she was garbage…”_

_“Plus, Hydra families keep in touch. I mean, Dr. Reinhardt has some very helpful tips. What's he always saying? ‘Discovery requires experimentation.’ …Show me what makes_ you _so_ special _.”_

Deke doesn’t let go until she herself pulls away, her eyelashes wet but her vision clear. “Thanks,” she tells him. “And I really am sorry, for judging you. You’re a good person, Deke. The team wouldn’t be the same without you.”

“Thanks. But don’t worry about it,” Deke tells her, a barely-contained sincerity and gentleness spilling from both his eyes. “Mack isn’t the only one hurting, and I know that.”

Daisy nods, not entirely comfortable with excusing her actions as easily as that but also not wanting to argue the point. “Also, uh… You asked; it was good. The performance. And the headband, the hair, the eyeliner…” She lets her gaze drop, just the once. “…the leather pants.” She smiles, mischievous. “It’s a good look on you. You should wear it more often.”

Deke lights up. “Really?”

“No,” Daisy lies.

He grins anyway. “…I think I’ll keep it around just in case.”

**Author's Note:**

>  **Translations:**  
>  Olga, это Daisy Johnson Она та, о ком я тебе говорил. — Olga, this is Daisy Johnson. She’s the one I told you about.  
>  Da, oна красивая, кто создает землетрясения. — Yes, the pretty one, who creates earthquakes.  
>  Все лимоны! Hикогда не доверяй человеку с таким количеством лимонов. — All the lemons! Never trust a man with so many lemons.  
>  Это был единственный способ заставить его заткнуться о вас, кроме лезвия в череп. — It was the only way we could get him to shut up about you besides blade to the skull.
> 
> Here’s some album art for Deke’s original song lmao. If you need the mp3 to go with it…well, let’s just say I spent my day yesterday splicing together the two clips to sound seamless despite the ad break and _may or may not _have created an mp3 out of it that has now played on repeat for about twelve hours straight. So.__
> 
> __Any and all feedback appreciated :)_ _


End file.
